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Big Business aims to split French

By SAM WALSH

There is very dirty work being
plotted to ‘strike a heavy blow
at the unity and solidarity of
the French-Canadian and Eng-
lish-Canadian workers.

Big business and the Trudeau
government have decided coldly
and brutally to bridle the work-
ing class with rigid wage and
salary ‘“‘guide-lines” — to put it
bluntly wage ceilings—coupled
with interest rate increases, a
freeze on federal government
spending on public low rental
housing, a ceiling on expendi-
tures for medical care and edu-
cation, a deliberate and cold-
blooded plan to increase unem-
ployment. There is not even a
fig leaf to cover their naked po-
licy of encouraging even higher
profit taking and soaring prices.

One of the biggest obstacles
to this plan for the most part
proclaimed publicly by Prime
Minister Trudeau, has been the
determined united opposition of
English and French Canada, and
within Quebec of the French-
speaking workers.

The evidence of this powerful
unity is all around us.

Recall the recent Convention
of the Letter Carriers and the
attitude of the Canadian Union
of Postal Workers from coast to
coast defying the wage ceiling
policy of the government and
preparing for another strike. Re-
call how the postal workers
forced Eric Kierans, the Post-
master General, by mass action
on the job to back down part
way on the inhuman work-load
regulations he had imposed on
them. The history of the postal
workers for the past five years
unquestionably has brought out
the decisive role the workers of
Quebec have played in trans-
forming the postal employees
into a vital, militant sector of

the labor movement. The neces-
sity of unity between the work-
ers of the two nations has been
demonstrated more than once
for these workers in the bitter
struggles of recent times.

The same thing can be said
for the experiences of the rail-
way workers. Railway workers
will not easily forget that
French - Canadian and English-
speaking workers in Montreal,
simultaneously with workers
from as far away in English
Canada as British Columbia and
with several other areas in be-
tween, defied the government
and their own treacherous lead-
ers and refused to go back to
work for as much as five days
after their leaders sold them out,
facing the possibility of severe
reprisals. Imagine the power of
this had there been coordination
of these courageous actions in-
stead of betrayal by their lead-
ers.

At time of writing there are
some 1,400 Stelco workers in
Quebec on strike together with
their brothers in Ontario. All of
them are watching with intense
interest and solidarity, the set-
tlements that the iron ore and
transport workers on the North
Shore are wresting from the
American and Anglo-Canadian
owned monopolies. Here, too:
English-speakirig workers from
Quebec and the ‘Maritimes are
right in there pitching with their
French-Canadian fellow-workers,
whose class consciousness is
stoked up considerably by their
national outrage against the
Anglo-Canadian bosses.

And what of the prolonged
two-year struggle of the U.S.
and French-Canadian and Eng-
lish-speaking teachers in Quebec
where the government and

school boards did everything to
split the teachers’ unions along

national, language and religious
(Catholic and Protestant) lines?
Despite the tendency. for some
leaders of the Corporation of
Teachers of Quebec to fall into
a nationalist trap during this
bitter and many-sided struggle,
the teachers maintained funda-
mental unity and militancy and
in the end forced the govern-
ment to make concessions which
appear at the time of writing to
be acceptable to the teachers.

Evidently St. James Street,
Bay Street, the federal govern-
ment and the government of
Quebec, not to speak of their
powerful “partners” in _ the
U.S.A. have been deep in study
of how to impose their disas-
trous hunger and sickness policy
under the guise of an “anti-in-
flation” policy. They have appa-
rently decided that the most vul-
nerable spot in the defences of
the enemy, that is the working
people, is national distrust bas-
ed on the national oppression of
the French-Canadian people ever
since the British Conquest over
two hundred years ago.

There is absolutely no inten-
tion of eliminating the national
oppression and discrimination—
just the opposite. The effort is
to fan the hostility engendered
by it and use it to break the
united resistance of the working
class.

The ground has been laid for
this nasty business by the Tru-
deau government and now the
Quebec government is following
through. } ;

What did the federal govern-
ment do? First of all Trudeau
ran his election campaign on the
slogan “One Canada—One Na-
tion,” denying the national exist-
ence of the French-Canadian na-
tion and their right to self-deter-
mination. He told the French-
Canadians of Quebec as he did
later the Indians to forget ‘old
grievances,” to look “forward”
to complete loss of national
identity and whatever aspects
of “national rights” they had
gained. He substituted certain
very limited rights of use of the
French language in English Can-
ada for the national, sovereign
rights of Quebec. He applied
very heavy pressure: with con-
siderable success, on the French-
Canadian bourgeoisie of Quebec
to cast out of their parties—the
Quebec Liberal Party and the
government party,
Nationale—the ‘“‘dangerous” bar-
gaining weapon of veiled or
open threats of separation. The
Liberals actually cleaned out the
petty bourgeois reformers like
René Léveque and Paul-Gérin
Lajoie, both of them formerly
very prominent cabinet minis-
ters and popular vote-getters,

the Union

and English-Canadian working class

because each put forward propo-
sals for the relations between
the two nations having as their
basis one or other form and
degree of sovereignty for Que-
bec.

Jean-Jacques Bertrand, Prime
Minister of Quebec, promised to
do the same thing in his party
with the nationalist petty bour-
geoisie (whose social program,
however, was far from reform-
ist, but on the contrary, quite
reactionary). He was unable to
do so at their recent leadership
Convention. But his government
is “coming through” for big bu-
siness just the same.

In the first place, it must be
decades: since a Prime Minister
of Quebec has grovelled public-
ly before a federal prime minis-
ter who denies the existence of
the French-Canadian nation the
way Bertrand does before Tru-
deau. His reaction to the “anti-
inflation” speech of Trudeau was
to say that in Quebec this policy

has been in force for some time - ¢

already. .

Then: a few days ago he an-
nounced twice that his govern-
ment is preparing to ‘meet
force with force” against the
bomb planters. To which Mau-
rice Bellemare, Minister of Lab-
or, has added the very ominous
note that it is particularly “in
the field of labor relations” that
the government is _ preparing
violence, the terms to be an-.
nounced very soon — coupled
with blaming “activists of all
kinds—Czechs, Russians, Anglo-
Saxons, I don’t know .. .” with
the violence in the labor move-
ment to which he adds: “I have
reason to believe — and that’s
enough of an affirmation—that
they are caused by other than
French-Canadians”’.

At first sight this might seem

_ workers of any innate 17

_ past decade?) French

just stupid and glaringly im ae

tradiction with réality.

But his singling out of Ang?
Saxons and “foreigners !
obviously meant to play
French-Canadian prejudices,
“absolve” the French-Cané |

ica |

ism and militancy, putting Us ;
blame on the “others” an ci}
ing to split the “good”, oo |
(where has Bellemare been aa
Canadial

from the nasty “subvers |
non-French workers, that eh :
is no time to waste in sounm, |
the alarm very loudly bole
Quebec and in English Cana”

In Quebec the lesson rus
brought home with all the fot
possible that nothing mu
allowed to deter the FF

they stand in. danger of
their hard - won demoe
gains.

In English Canada no 1ess
lesson must be brought aa
with all the force possible the ||
in order to maintain and sti '
en the unity of the WO, |.
class and to defend success otk |
together the rights of the Wo. 9

j
|

a

3
=

ing people of Canada it is nee ft
sary to give unqualified su i
for the right of self-deter™
tion of the French-Canadia?
tion in Quebec, for a new ~ 4 },
dian constitution based ornid|
equal and voluntary partne
of the two nations. SU oul
strong: principled position pt
be a powerful force in Ce! xi
ing the unity of the wor ie
class of Canada and woul?
decisive in smashing tO ye ‘
ereens the filthy plot of di

and rule worked out in bet

watching the ticker tape.

i

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"PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 29, 1969 — PAGE 8